A sustained counterattack by Libyan government troops sent overmatched rebel fighters fleeing eastward for almost 100 miles Tuesday, erasing many of the weekend gains by opposition forces attempting to overthrow Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi.
Panicked and badly rattled, hundreds of rebels sped away from the front to escape fierce rocket barrages by Gadhafi's soldiers and militiamen. Rebel gun trucks raced three abreast and jostled madly for position on a coastal highway choked with retreating fighters and civilians. At one point, rebels surrendered 70 miles of terrain in just four hours.
It was a humiliating rout for a volunteer fighting force that had advanced 150 miles in 24 hours over the weekend behind allied airstrikes that pummeled government troops and armor. Many rebels had spoken confidently of marching on Tripoli, the capital, buoyed by false news reports Monday that their forces had captured Gadhafi's hometown garrison of Sirte.
But by Tuesday afternoon, those same rebels were in headlong retreat from Bin Jawwad, which they had seized only Sunday. Many fled 25 miles east to Ras Lanuf, the oil city captured by the opposition Saturday. By nightfall, the city and its refinery were under government assault as the rebel retreat spilled farther east.
There was no sign of allied airstrikes, which had cleared the way for the rebels' weekend advances. Some rebels regard allied warplanes as their personal air force. However, the U.N. Security Council resolution that authorizes attacks against Gadhafi forces that threaten civilians does not extend to close air support for rebel forces.
Rebels have been unable or unwilling to move forward without airstrikes, which have grounded Gadhafi's air force and robbed his troops of many of their tanks, armor and rocket batteries.
"Where is Sarkozy? Where is Obama?" asked Hussam Bernwi, 36, an exterminator wielding an assault rifle, referring to French and American warplanes and missiles. Bernwi wore camouflage fatigues that he said were abandoned by government militiamen.
"I'm disappointed," Bernwi said. "We can't win without those planes."
Fleeing rebels were reduced to bickering and recriminations. Some screamed at gun trucks that continued to barrel east past Ras Lanuf, deep into rebel-held eastern Libya.
"Turn around and fight!" one young rebel shouted at a passing gun truck. "If you don't want to fight, give us your guns."
Other rebels fired their weapons toward overcast skies, a gesture of futility that only accentuated the pervasive sense of gloom and defeat among some volunteer fighters.
The swift battlefield reversal underscored the mercurial nature of the war in the east, where neither side seems strong enough to vanquish the other. Nearly a month of fighting has raged back and forth across a 220-mile stretch of coastal wasteland in a nation with a coastline of nearly 1,100 miles.
The headlong retreat from Bin Jawwad marked the second time in just 23 days that government forces had routed rebels there. The town is on the fault line between eastern and western Libya, with several tribes in the area split between the two sides.
By nightfall Tuesday, some rebel gun trucks had retreated all way east to Uqaylah, 45 miles from Ras Lanuf _ and nearly 120 miles from the spot where rebels had advanced to within 50 miles of Sirte 24 hours earlier.
Among those fleeing were rebels driving trucks mounted with the opposition's most effective weapons: 106mm artillery, heavy machine guns and recoilless rifles. Rebels firing behind sand dunes shouted at them to turn around, but they ignored them and sped east.
Some fighters acknowledged that they felt helpless against the BM-21 Grad rocket systems that pounded rebel positions throughout the day. There was no sign near Bin Jawwad of Grad batteries that rebels seized from government forces last weekend.
"When the Grads hit, we all ran," said Abdelsalam Ali, 37, a taxi driver armed with an assault rifle. "They're too strong for us."
Asked if he would stand his ground and fight if the government advance continued, Ali shrugged and replied, "It's not wise to face these guys when they have heavy weapons and we don't. I'm trying to do this in a safe way."
